56 RURAL VETERINARY SECRETS 



sour odor. All of these are signs of faulty digestion due to over- 

 taxing the digestive organs and lack of proper assistance to these 

 organs while put to this severe test. 



You will notice that such conditions are rarely found when the 

 cow is at liberty in the pasture where she has access to the ad- 

 vantages of nature. Many of us have seen a cow or horse paw a hole 

 into the ground and eat clay, chew old bones, pieces of rusty iron or 

 even eat dry wood, etc. When they do this they are doing it for 

 a purpose and usually the purpose is to neutralize the secretions of 

 the digestive organs, which have been deranged for some reason or 

 other. But while confined to the stable, she is deprived of all these 

 advantages and is dependent entirely upon you. Naturally you give 

 her liay, grain, water, and possibly some ensilage, you prepare your 

 ration to suit your own convenience, but pay too little attention to 

 the natural wants of the cow, and the same plan is carried out dur- 

 ing the entire season. You deprived her of the advantages of nature 

 and it now becomes your duty to study out a plan by which you 

 can substitute something artificially in place of those things which 

 you are not furnishing her, but is demanded by nature. If you will 

 take the trouble to do this, your cow, horse, sheep, or hog, what- 

 ever it may be, will surely thrive better and yield more profit for 

 the amount of food consumed. 



If a man were confined like animals are, he would not thrive 

 so well either. We may feel like eating beefsteak with onions for 

 a while, but if we were to get it three times a day with the same 

 side dish and dessert, we would soon call for a change, no matter 

 how near a proper ration this would figure out to be. When eating 

 our meats, which correspond to the grain in an herbivorous animal's 

 ration, we spice it to aid its digestibility, and we add such spices 

 as are best adapted for the kind of food we take. We take care that 

 all our vital organs are properly toned so that they may perform 

 their natural functions, by taking such food as we desire and which 

 answers nature's demand for the system, but we forget that an 

 animal under domestication should have like privileges, in order to 

 thrive best. 



The writer hereof was born and raised on a farm, has practiced 

 veterinary medicine for twenty-seven years in a dairy and stock 

 raising community where one cannot help but observe a necessity 

 which must in the future find more sympathy for the dumb animal 

 in the hearts and minds of mankind for the mutual benefit of both. 

 It appears that we can supply this call of nature with a little 

 careful observation and study of the actual needs of the animal's 



